yellow
by ShadowsTakeAll
Summary: "Thank god," Stiles says weakly, his eyes closing again, and Scott knows they're not going to open this time, "I thought… I thought maybe it was… maybe it was me after all."


**Hi all. This is something I started ages ago but life got in the way and I only just finished it. Warnings: blood, violence, character death. You should expect that from me by now. Set post-S4 but pretty much ignores it completely. Enjoy, review, you know the drill.**

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.

_"I kind of always thought it would be you."  
><em>_"Shut up, Stiles."  
><em>_"No, Scotty, I'm serious -"  
><em>_"Stiles. Shut up. I can hear something."  
><em>_"What is it?"  
><em>_"I don't know. It sounds like…"  
><em>_"… sounds like what?"  
><em>_"It sounds like we need to run. Now."_

.

It starts at the end and the middle's all jumbled and the ending never really comes.

.

After the Benefactor and the deadpool and more assassins than anyone could keep track of, Scott and his pack had breathed a collective sigh of relief.

They were sure to get a break now.

Beacon Hills was quiet.

Everything was fine.

They were okay.

And then, in the blink of an eye, they aren't.

.

This time there's no warning. No banshee screams, no foreboding nightmares, no cryptic hints. No sign that anything was wrong at all until the whole town is burning and every single supernatural creature within the county limits started to disappear.

Sometimes it's one at a time. An omega here, a banshee there, even the last Wendigo. But then it escalates and suddenly whole packs are going missing, entire families, half their freaking school.

.

And then it's Scott's pack.

.

Derek is the first to disappear, but it takes them a while to notice. Even after the fiasco that was Mexico, he still hasn't kept in regular contact with them. He still skulks off to lick his wounds in private, and it's almost a week before they realize nobody's heard from him.

When they show up to his apartment, the scent of blood is so strong that Scott and Malia can't even walk into the room.

"He's not dead," Lydia says quietly, "I'd know if he was dead."

Scott dips his head, acknowledging the statement, but a heavy silence hangs between all of them. She's been wrong before, and even if he is still alive, every second they waste could change that.

.

The next to go is Malia, which again isn't a surprise. She's hardly been part of the pack, ever since she found out that Peter is her father – and that the others had kept it from her. She's been distant for a while, but then _distant _turns to _gone _and there's a panicked race to find her. She's not at school, she's not at her house, and even Peter hasn't seen her in days. Scott loses her scent and she won't answer Stiles' calls and Lydia can't sense her anywhere.

There's no sign of a struggle this time, not really, but the covers have been flung off her bed and dragged along the ground.

Like someone had taken her in the night.

.

Whoever's behind this is acting strategically, working their way up to the alpha. They go for the outsiders first, the people with the fewest ties to the pack. Kira's the next to disappear, and this time it's more daring. She'd been waiting in the hall for Scott after lacrosse practice, and he'd seen her just before he ducked into the locker room to drop off his gear. But when he walks back outside, she's not there. She's not anywhere. There's a strange scent, but Scott can only track it as far as the edge of the lacrosse field before he loses it.

He calls Stiles and Lydia, and is immensely relieved when they both pick up.

.

Two days pass, and it seems like the threat has backed off for now. Scott, Stiles, and Lydia skip school and spend their time looking for their missing pack mates, but they don't have any luck. There are no clues, no ransom notes, nothing to indicate that their friends didn't just disappear off the face of the earth.

"They can't have just disappeared," Scott bursts out, slamming his fist against the wall. It helps for a split second, the pain distracting him enough to clear his head. "When was the last time either of you heard from Liam?"

The identical looks of dawning horror on his friends' faces are enough of an answer.

.

Liam was supposed to be staying with family up north, but a few quick calls make it clear that he never made it that far. He probably never made it out of Beacon Hills.

"So whoever has the others probably has Liam too," Lydia rationalizes.

Stiles gives her a sideways look. "Has them," he murmurs, "or maybe killed them."

Nobody argues.

.

There may only be three of them left, but as long as he has a pack, Scott knows he has a chance.

.

The enemy knows that too, because one day Stiles and Lydia are laughing with him at lunch and the next day they don't turn up to school at all.

Their laughter echoes in Scott's ears as he roams the halls, searching for a sign, a scent, something. Anything. Some tiny scrap of evidence that would suggest his two closest friends haven't been taken.

With empty hands and an even emptier heart he gives up the search.

For the first time since becoming a werewolf, he's alone. He's painfully, completely alone.

So he does what any self-respecting alpha would do.

He gives up.

.

It's easy to play the part when his entire pack has disappeared. All he has to do is wear his heart on his sleeve, make the enemy think he's broken. He wanders the streets late into the night, by himself, occasionally letting out a mournful howl. (He knows this is a terrible plan, even without Stiles or Lydia to helpfully point it out like they usually do.) Just before three am, his howl gets cut short as someone hits him on the back of the head, and he greets the darkness with open arms.

.

"How long do you think we've been here?"

"A day, maybe."

"How long do you think they'll keep us here?"

When nothing but silence greets her ears, Lydia sighs. "Stiles," she says into the darkness, "I don't think we're going to make it out this time."

"We will." It's Kira who responds, piping up from the cell beside Lydia. None of them can see each other – whoever took them had blindfolded all of them, not to mention tied their hands behind their backs – but they know roughly where everyone is. Kira right at the end, then Lydia, Stiles, Malia, Liam, and Derek up the other end.

"You really think so?" Malia asks drily.

"I do." Kira's voice is confident but lacks conviction; she's saying it because she's expected to be optimistic, not because she really is.

But in the situation they're in, they'll take what they can get.

.

When Scott opens his eyes, he knows at once his plan worked. He's blindfolded, but he can tell the pack is near. He takes a deep breath and picks out the individual scents, feeling almost faint with relief when he checks off every member of the pack. (He's also feeling faint because whoever had hit him had done so hard enough to leave a bruise.)

"Scott?" Derek says, the first to identify their new visitor.

"Are you okay?" Malia asks, the next to be sure it's him.

"I'm fine," Scott says quickly. "Are you guys all okay?"

A chorus of half-hearted murmurs meet him; everyone is as okay as they can be.

"How did they get you?" Stiles asks after a while.

"I let them."

A long silence follows his words.

"Not to be disrespectful to my alpha or anything," Malia says delicately (or what passes as delicate for her), "but either you have some fantastic plan we're all not aware of, or you're the worst alpha ever."

Scott lets out a sound that's somewhere between a growl and a chuckle. "Trust me, I have a plan."

.

Stiles and Lydia both helpfully tell him that his plan is terrible.

.

"But we don't have anything else," Stiles concedes at last, "so let's give it a shot."

"Yeah, a shot in the dark," Malia mumbles, but everyone ignores her.

.

It's silent for what feels like a lifetime, and then there's movement and noise and lights so bright they cut through the blindfolds.

A creak. A thud. A muffled cry. A shuffling of feet.

Then ominous silence.

"Roll call," Scott says, and one by one the pack calls out.

Lydia. Kira. Malia. Liam. Derek.

Scott waits a minute more, his heart beating uncomfortably against his ribs. "Stiles?"

.

"Where did Stiles go?"

.

"Did they take him?"

.

"Why would they take _Stiles_?"

.

"He's not supernatural."

.

"Maybe that's why they took him."

.

After a few minutes of rushed, panicked conversation, the consensus seems to be that Stiles was taken by mistake. That when they realized he wasn't supernatural, they took him away. That they're probably going to kill him.

"I hate to be the one to suggest this," Derek says wearily, "but there are ways to get around the whole supernatural loophole."

Scott doesn't get it right away, but Malia catches on. "There are ways to make him supernatural." She pauses. "Can't you smell it? There are other werewolves in here. There are a lot of them."

"So maybe they're going to get one of them to bite Stiles," Lydia finishes in horror, wishing her 170 IQ could come up with a way to get them out of this.

"Interesting theory," says a new voice, silky smooth, from somewhere in the vicinity of what seems to be the door, "but there's one critical point you're missing."

Nobody speaks; nobody moves.

"We _are_ going to have someone turn the boy, but it won't be one of the others." There's another pause, and although none of them can see the speaker they know he's smiling with glee. "It's perfectly logical, I assure you. After all, who better to turn him than his own alpha?"

.

Action quickly follows the announcement and Scott is marched away before any of them can react. And, almost as quickly, he's back again, accompanied by a background melody of howls of pain.

.

The next few minutes are absolute chaos.

.

Scott fights his way through the guards and starts to break each pack member out, but all he can think is that Stiles isn't here and he needs to get to him.

.

He does.

.

But he's too late.

.

"You weren't here, so we had to improvise. We -"

The silky smooth voice cuts off as Scott slams into the person, throwing him to the floor. Stiles is on the ground, and Scott can smell the blood but he can't see it, can't fix it, can't even –

"Go," he spits out to his pack, gathered behind him like an army.

A chorus of protests breaks out.

"But -"

"You can't -"

"He's _bleeding_ -"

"_Scott_ -"

"_Go_." Authority makes his voice sharp and nobody dares to argue.

"Follow me," Derek says, and the others fall into line behind him. They disappear down the hall, and the sounds of violence cover the thud of their footsteps.

.

The scent of blood grows stronger.

.

"Come on, buddy, we gotta move."

"Scott, I can't – my leg -"

.

Somehow they make it into another room, down a corridor they hadn't noticed before. The door closes behind them and Stiles lets out a pained sigh, and now Scott can see the blood seeping through his friend's jeans.

Stiles glances down at it and grimaces. "It's nowhere near as bad as it looks, I swear, it just -"  
>"Stiles."<p>

"You know, with the flimsy material of the jeans and the fact that I'm just naturally -"

"_Stiles_."

He falls silent, and then he just falls, slumping against the wall. Scott's at his side in an instant, catching him before he hits the floor, helping him sink onto the cold ground.

"He didn't bite me," Stiles mumbles, and Scott's heart shudders.

"What?"

"The guy they took me to," Stiles says, his voice fading with each word, "he didn't bite me."

Scott's eyes flicker down to the growing patch of blood on Stiles' jeans. "Then why are you practically bleeding out in front of me?"

Stiles' eyes have closed, but he opens one and fixes his gaze on his friend. "God, I'm glad you're sugar-coating this." When Scott doesn't react, Stiles rolls his eyes. "I'm dying, Scott. You could at least pretend my jokes are funny."

"You're not -" Scott begins, but Stiles cuts him off.

"It's okay," he says, and Scott nods at him to go on. "The guy was a werewolf, but he didn't use his teeth… he used a knife."

"A knife," Scott echoes, trying to puzzle it out, and then the last corner piece falls into place and he lets out a noise that's uncomfortably like a snarl. "They wanted me to be the one to bite you."

.

A long silence follows.

.

"Do you – do you want me to?"

.

Still silent, Stiles holds out his arm. He looks away as he feels fangs sink into his wrist, knowing this is the only way to save him.

And wishing he didn't know that there's a chance it will just kill him sooner.

.

They wait in silence again, Stiles' labored breathing the only sound. Scott can taste blood in his mouth and he has to force himself not to spit it out. It wasn't meant to be like this; Stiles was supposed to be safe.

.

The silence becomes overwhelming and they fill it with words, ones that don't mean anything, ones that mean everything.

.

On his own, Scott could escape; he could be out the front door before anyone caught him. But Stiles is hurt, and Scott won't leave without him.

.

So they wait.

.

"I kind of always thought it would be you."

"Shut up, Stiles."

"No, Scotty, I'm serious -"

"Stiles. Shut up. I can hear something."

"What is it?"

"I don't know. It sounds like…"

"… sounds like what?"

"It sounds like we need to run. Now."

.

They do run, but not fast enough. The footsteps Scott had heard fade into nothingness, but they keep running. Scott follows the scent of his pack, with Stiles leaning on his shoulder, right next to the weight of the world.

.

They're almost at the door when Stiles stumbles, sagging to the floor, and even Scott can't hold him up. They end up sitting side by side, Scott panicking and Stiles fading.

"Stay with me, buddy," Scott says, a command that comes out as a plea, and Stiles just shakes his head.

"My eyes," he murmurs, and Scott racks his brain trying to think of a single eye-related turning-into-a-werewolf symptom there is. "What – what are -"

Scott leans forward so he can hear Stiles' words, and then realizes that he could have just used his werewolf-hearing. Suddenly being a werewolf doesn't seem appealing in the least.

"What color -?" Stiles manages to grit out, clenching his teeth against the pain. "What color are they?"

It takes Scott a second, but then he gets it.

.

If they're blue, it means the nogitsune's crimes have bled into him. If they're yellow, it means he's not responsible.

.

Scott turns to his friend, breathes out slowly. "Yellow," he says, "they're yellow."

.

"Thank god," Stiles says weakly, his eyes closing again, and Scott knows they're not going to open this time, "I thought… I thought maybe it was… maybe it was me after all."

"It wasn't you," Scott assures him, and he doesn't even notice that he's covered in his friend's blood and he doesn't hear his pack coming back. "It wasn't you, Stiles."

"I know," he says, his hand drifting up to clutch at Scott's shirt, to hold onto the one person who'd been with him through everything. The one person who'd held him together. The one person who's going to have the most trouble learning to let him go.

.

By the time the pack arrives Scott's legs have seized up and his face is streaked with tears and he can't even smell the blood anymore.

.

Derek and Malia drag him away from Stiles' body and Lydia's screams carry them through the door and Kira and Liam act as bodyguards as they flee.

.

It's not until two weeks after Stiles' funeral that someone thinks to ask, and Scott doesn't even hesitate.

"He was turning," he says, "but the bite didn't take. His eyes changed, but he didn't… It wasn't enough."

Lydia tilts her head, sensing out the lie of omission. "What color were they?"

Scott looks at his friend, and he thinks of Stiles, and he lies through his teeth. "Yellow," he says firmly, "they were yellow."

.

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**If you liked this, feel free to check out my other Teen Wolf stories, and don't forget to review!**


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